Diamond First Observation of Synchrotron Light

May 2006 

At 2.00am on Tuesday 30th May 2006 (Spring Bank Holiday Monday night shift!), Diamond's accelerator team achieved stored beam in the 561.6 metre Storage Ring, which in turn allowed the first observation of synchrotron light. 

Yet another great moment in the commissioning of the synchrotron and, as Riccardo Bartolini, Diamond's Head of Accelerator Physics, says, "We are successfully taking the first steps in climbing the ladder up to our eventual beam current target of 300 mA and we are very encouraged by these early date results". 

These graphs show the signal taken from the instrument (DCCT) that measures the average current circulating in the storage ring. It shows that more than 2 mA were circulating and that current was accumulated from several booster cycles.